The joint venture, to be known as Penguin Random House, will be the leading publisher of English-language books but could late interest from Rupert Murdoch scupper the deal?
The British parliament’s commissioner for standards has opened an inquiry into allegations Jeremy Hunt failed to register donations from media companies.
Public figures including Hugh Grant, JK Rowling and Sienna Miller are to appear alongside other alleged phone hacking victims including Madeleine McCann’s father.
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and sons will likely face the ire of shareholders angry over the company’s association with the phone hacking scandal in the UK.
The former chief executive of News International appears before the UK Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport on the phone-hacking scandal in the News of the World.
London police employed Alex Marunchak as an interpretator for the service between 1980 and 2000 – while he was still working for the News of the World.
The first News of the World journalist to bring allegations of phone hacking at the newspaper into the public domain has been found dead. Police are not treating the death as suspicious.
A group of News Corporation shareholders are suing the media conglomerate over what they claim are large-scale governance failures surrounding the British phone-hacking case.
RUPERT MURDOCH must have been a happy man today, as News Corporation posted a net profit of $875m (€665m ) for the fourth quarter of 2009.
Last year, News Corp sold a Bulgarian TV station, cash from a BSkyB legal settlement, and received some tax credits.
Overall, the company posted yearly profits of $2.5bn (€1.9bn) for 2009.
Murdoch said: “Despite the volatility of world economies, News Corporation continues to thrive on a truly global scale,” and added, “These results underscore just how well positioned we are – fiscally, operationally and strategically – for further growth across all of our markets.”
The News Corp empire consists of bodies like the Fox network, film studio 20th Century Fox, publishing house Harper Collins, and newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the Times.
